Matron! the children of whose love, Each to his grave, in youth hath passed,And now the mould is heaped above The dearest and the last!Bride! who dost wear the widow's veilBefore the wedding flowers are pale!Ye deem the human heart enduresNo deeper, bitterer grief than yours.

Yet there are pangs of keener wo, Of which the sufferers never speak,Nor to the world's cold pity show The tears that scald the cheek,Wrung from their eyelids by the shameAnd guilt of those they shrink to name,Whom once they loved with cheerful will,And love, though fallen and branded, still.

Weep, ye who sorrow for the dead, Thus breaking hearts their pain relieve;And reverenced are the tears ye shed, And honoured ye who grieve.The praise of those who sleep in earth,The pleasant memory of their worth,The hope to meet when life is past,Shall heal the tortured mind at last.

But ye, who for the living lost That agony in secret bear,Who shall with soothing words accost The strength of your despair?Grief for your sake is scorn for themWhom ye lament and all condemn;And o'er the world of spirits liesA gloom from which ye turn your eyes.

Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps, From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;All summer he moistens his verdant steeps With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs;And he shakes the woods on the mountain side,When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide.But when, in the forest bare and old, The blast of December calls,He builds, in the starlight clear and cold, A palace of ice where his torrent falls,With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair,And pillars blue as the summer air.For whom are those glorious chambers wrought, In the cold and cloudless night?Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought

What heroes from the woodland sprung, When, through the fresh awakened land,The thrilling cry of freedom rung,And to the work of warfare strung The yeoman's iron hand!Hills flung the cry to hills around, And ocean-mart replied to mart,And streams whose springs were yet unfound,Pealed far away the startling sound Into the forest's heart.Then marched the brave from rocky steep, From mountain river swift and cold;The borders of the stormy deep,The vales where gathered waters sleep,Sent up the strong and bold,--As if the very earth again Grew quick with God's creating breath,And, from the sods of grove and glen,Rose ranks of lion-hearted